Are Ellipses… fading away?

Ellipses, or dot-dot-dot (informally know) have been used for centuries in writing, symbolising an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. They are recently used to create suspense by adding a pause before the end of the sentence or to show the trailing off of a thought.

In the last decades they've made their way into the interface design, starting from the first Mac interface (System Software 1.0) up until the latest updates, be it Mac OS, Linux, or Windows and as well as in the previous written days, the usage of ellipses in user interface can symbolise different things:

Follow up decisions or informations

The most common usage in desktop apps for ellipses is to represent the fact that there is more information or another interaction to be made after clicking it.

For example in Windows 95 after you click on “Shut Down Windows” you would have to make another selection from one of the following:

This however does not carry on into the latest interfaces, it gets replace by interactive dropdown sections, animations and transitional actions. By replacing them in key areas where the screen estate allows it makes the navigation more fluid and the user easily understands the options even just by hovering.

We can even say that in the last few years desktop interfaces are moving away from the three little dots, and use them only when either the space does not allow it or the content is secondary.

Mobile Devices

On Mobile devices the dots do much more than on desktops and tablets, they hide most of the options so that the user keeps focusing on primary content and does not get bombarded with options and buttons.

This however does not apply to all the most common mobile interfaces; for example Google in the material design guidelines even recommends moving away from the ellipsis and is showing more relatable icons without cluttering the interface.

In the Youtube mobile app Google is using it as a small side menu that contains only unnecessary information for the common usage (send feedback, report, playback speed, etc.) unlike Apple, is showing its options right up front.

“Type here”

Similar to the desktop interfaces the ellipses are fading away from the “type here” input fields as well, just take a look at eBay and Facebook:

Besides the psychological effect that a unfinished text it has, the ellipses are also easy to spot in a crowded environment, this makes for a cleaner interface, with less cluttering and the three little dots got replaced either by icons, question marks or even removed at all.

Waiting Animations

Another usage for ellipsis is to display that an action is in progress using it as an animation; more sow this is used in all of the major messaging apps, from iMessage to Skype.

We’re so anxious to get the next text, they give you those three little ghosty dots to tell ya it’s coming. “Oh, we’re cooking up a good one for you. Wait till ya see this. You are not gonna believe what this guy’s about to say.” I can’t show it to you yet. We’re still working on it in the text machine, but it’s gonna be a beauty. You can see the pistons pumping. - Jerry Seinfeld - 23 hours to kill

Imagine if we didn’t have these animations, the user wouldn’t know when someone is writing something and when he's changed his mind.

Ellipsis everywhere

Either there is a universal conspiracy or the fact that I researched this topic for about a week now, I just wanted to share some other UI elements with you that strongly resample the previous mentioned.

The ellipsis pattern may be going out of style from what they were previously intended to do but I think they are starting to appear in all other different places and we should not overlook the fact that they helped people make decisions all these years; these three little dots.